All3Media chairman Steve Morrison has said the BBC should make up to 75% of its programmes available to independent producers if it does not hand over some of the licence fee to Channel 4.

Morrison said the independent sector needed to be bolstered because of the long-term decline in advertising revenues faced by Channel 4, the only public service broadcaster not to have an in-house production division.

The All3Media boss said Channel 4 had previously made a "strong case" for public subsidy and "I think possibly Channel 4 still has a case".

"The BBC needs to look to a package of measures to help it defend its position to have sole use of the licence fee," Morrison told the Voice of the Listener and Viewer conference in London on Wednesday.

"If Channel 4 is not to be subsidised, then the BBC's in-house production guarantee should be reduced from 50% to 25%, allowing a fairer competitive playing field on the BBC's airwaves.

"If Channel 4 is squeezed then the independent production sector will be squeezed with it."

Morrison said the BBC's in-house quota, currently 50%, should be reduced to 25%, with the "window of creative competition", open to both in-house and indies, increased from 25% to 50%. A further 25% is guaranteed for independent producers.

Morrison said the BBC had a fight on its hands to preserve the licence fee.

"There is a group of determined newspaper proprietors not bound by rules of impartiality who also have competing interests who seemed determined to reduce the scope and scale of public funding that goes to the BBC," he said.

"They have now been joined by selected outriders of one or more political parties, softening the ground for a potentially retrograde settlement in the next charter renewal."

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